


Maybe You Knew

by quicksilverdeancas (quicksilvermalec)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with no happy ending, Author Is A Cruel and Capricious God, Author is a Terrible Person, Cas loves him too?, How Do I Tag, Hurt No Comfort, I think?, I'm so sorry, M/M, Pining Dean Winchester, enjoy maybe please?, i really don't know how to tag this, idk he's not in it but it's basically a love letter for him, so much fucking angst, sorta?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 20:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20345974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilvermalec/pseuds/quicksilverdeancas
Summary: Maybe you knew. But maybe you didn't know any of it at all.I don't know which is worse.orIn which I'm grieving for you, and I can't stop thinking about it, and fuck I wish I'd told you before... that.





	Maybe You Knew

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this whole thing is really out of character. Maybe I'm crazy, but I feel like it's not very... Dean-like.
> 
> I'm just going to justify it by saying this is Dean half-mad with grief, pretty rough around the edges, and sort of just spilling all of the things he always _wanted_ to say but never could, never thought about enough because he wanted to ignore the fact that they existed. Chill?
> 
> Dope.
> 
> Enjoy??????

I’m sitting in a motel room. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall dumbly. I haven’t spoken in a couple of hours. Sam is leaning against the wall to my left; I haven’t looked at him in a couple of hours either. He’s stopped trying to talk to me.

I’m just staring at the peeling wallpaper and thinking about you.

I miss you.

I love you. Did you know that I love you? I barely knew it myself.

I’m sitting here, on the bed, thinking about you. I wish you were here.

All I can think is ‘maybe you knew’.

Maybe you knew that I would have stayed there, on my knees, broken and dying, if my brother hadn’t physically dragged me away from you.

Maybe you knew that that night I would wake from a nightmare, screaming your name, begging you to help me, too hysterical to remember that you were gone.

Maybe you knew that Sam would never say your name again, because he knew without having to ask that your name was only for me.

Maybe you knew these things, and that was why you slipped through my fingers, to spare me the pain of having to let go of you.

Maybe you knew that I _wouldn’t_ let go. (I didn’t, not for hours. I laid there on top of you and sobbed and prayed but you still didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t come back, no matter how hard I begged you would, just one last time.)

Maybe you knew what I never said, what is still unsaid between the two of us, even now.

Maybe you knew. Maybe you were trying to protect me from it.

(If you were, you did a shitty job. But that’s okay, I don’t blame you. You couldn’t have controlled this. You tried to protect me from everything, all the time. I love you for it.)

Maybe you knew. But maybe you didn’t know any of it at all.

I don’t know which is worse.

It’s been a year.

It’s been exactly one year since you sacrificed yourself for me.

(And Sam. I know you were doing it for both of us, because you didn’t love me the way that I loved you, the way that I still love you, even now, even though it hurts so much more because you’re _dead_, you’re fucking dead, and I’m probably never, ever going to see you again, not even in the afterlife.)

You know, I always thought that I would be the one to make the sacrifice play. I am the king of the sacrifice play. You liked to refer to it as my ‘Self-Sacrificing Winchester Bullshit’. Thank you to my baby brother Sammy, for introducing Cas to the wide world of expletives.

You were my angel. If you were here, you would say ‘of course, I _am _an angel’, but that’s not what I mean.

I mean that you were my saving grace (no pun intended). I mean that you literally pulled me out of hell, that you have saved my skin a million times, that you dragged my sorry ass out of my deepest self-loathings. I mean that you turned my entire life around.

I mean that you’re sweet, and generous, and loving, and constantly confused, and just so fucking _beautiful_.

At this point, I’m just saying all the things I wanted to say to you before… before. But to be really honest with you, Cas, I just don’t care anymore. You were my whole _fucking_ world and you’re gone. I love you, and you’re gone.

Do you know what I really wanted from you, Cas?

I didn’t even _need _a big wedding, but it would’ve been nice. But what I really wanted was a house. I want a house on a hill with a white picket fence and a husband who kisses me when I wake up and brings me coffee. I want to settle down with you and have that apple-pie life.

I never got to call you ‘baby’. I always wanted to. It almost slipped out, a couple of times, and I deflected by making some stupid comment about how you’re ‘family’.

I never got to hear you call me ‘honey’ or ‘sweetheart’ or ‘my love’, which makes me sound like a character from a chick flick (and you know how much I hate chick flick moments) but those are all things I can reasonably imagine you saying.

If I said any of these things out loud, Sam would probably give me a look like ‘have you been abducted by fucking aliens?’

So I’m sitting here in a motel, thinking about you, on the one-year anniversary of your death.

I’m staring at this unappealing wallpaper and Sam’s leaning against a wall. We had a hunt, but we finished it pretty damn quickly and it served as a negligent distraction from my grief.

(And by negligent, I mean it didn’t distract me at all. Sam won’t even let me drive, that’s how fucking miserable I am over you, Cas. And God, I never thought I’d grieve this hard over anybody besides Sammy, but here I am, crying myself to sleep every night. I’d say I’m pathetic, but you wouldn’t want me to become pathetic for you.)

As I sit here and stare at the wall, Sam finally speaks up for the first time in several hours.

“What do you need, Dean?” he asks me. It’s the only invitation I need. I slump forward, the tears that have been threatening to spill from my eyes finally brimming over and wetting my cheeks. My shoulders shake with my sobs, and Sam watches me uncertainly.

I turn to look at him angrily, even though I’m not actually angry. It’s just easier to be angry than sad, so whenever I cry I like to pretend it’s out of anger.

“For fuck’s sake, if you want to be over here so badly then come over here!” I shout at him. He flinches, but then he pushes away from the wall and crosses the space between us in one step. He drops onto the bed next to me and hugs me, and I hug him back and cry into his flannel.

“I was in love with him, Sammy,” I choke out. “I’m in love with him. I love him and he’s dead and I just feel… empty.”

Sam doesn’t say anything about Jessica. Or Madison, or Ruby, or Gabriel, or anyone else he’s ever loved that he lost, and I’m grateful. I think he knows that it’s harder for me because while he gives his love freely and openly, I don’t. Because Sam knows that life is fuller when you can share it with people who love you, people who you love back.

I understand that on an intellectual level, but I am too afraid to actually let myself love people. Sam knows that there are only three people in this world that I love; him, Bobby, and you. And he knows that it’s because when I love people, my love runs deeper and thicker than blood or water.

My love is a tie to those people that can never be broken. It can be battered, and it can hurt like the ninth circle of hell – and God knows, Cas, that you have battered and hurt my love for you over the years – but it’s not about to break, and when it comes back, it’s hard as motherfucking titanium.

“I know you were,” Sam murmurs into my hair (curse him for being so tall). “I know you do. I love you, and I’m here, and I’m not going to give up on you. I’m here for you, when you need me.”

“I love you too, Sammy,” I sob. “You’re my baby brother. I love you. God, I’m sorry.”

Sam’s grip gets a little bit tighter around my chest, but the compression feels good, not painful. “It’s okay,” he whispers.

It’s not. It really isn’t okay, and when it comes down to it, it will never be okay. I have fucked it all up so completely and irreparably that I’m never going to be able to fix it. I’m not okay, Cas. I’m not okay, Sam isn’t okay, and you’re _definitely _not okay.

Do you know how much I miss you? Do you even understand the pain that I’m feeling?

You probably do.

You know, I spent a very, _very _long time trying to figure out a way to get you back, to bring you back to me, so that I could just have you in my arms… just once.

I didn’t want to fall in love with you, Cas. I didn’t want to feel anything for you, because I am poison and fire and dynamite all wrapped up in one package and I never wanted to hurt you. Because I knew that if I fell in love with you you’d eventually abandon me just like everybody else does. Because I wanted to spare myself the pain, because I wanted to spare _you_ the pain.

It doesn’t matter now if I wanted to or not. I did it. I made the mistake, I took the leap. And now everything is so fucked to hell I wouldn’t have the energy to go back and fix it even if I could.

I made this trap for myself. I loved you, but I didn’t want to love you, and I was scared of you, and exhilarated by you and all I wanted was to pull you closer but all I wanted was to push you away from me. You were fucking terrifying, and I loved you.

I love you.

(I keep saying it, just to myself, because I don’t think I could ever say it out loud to anyone besides Sam. It’s not like I was telling him anything that he didn’t already know. But you… you had no idea.

I think.)

I made this trap for myself where no matter where I moved something bad would go down. No matter where you led me somebody would get hurt, no matter what happened to me, _I _would get hurt.

Why did you do this to me, Cas?

That’s stupid. You didn’t do anything to me. I fell in love with you all on my own.

Maybe not voluntarily, but you didn’t force me into anything. I just sort of stumbled… right into you.

And it hurts. God, it hurts so much, Cas. I hate it, I hate it so fucking much.

I miss you.

I keep coming back to that. I miss you and I wish you would come home. You’re not coming home, though. I know that, I’ve come to terms with that.

But I can wish.

I think it’s time for me to let go. You wouldn’t want this for me. You would be upset that I let this happen to myself. You’d want me to move on.

I love you, Castiel.

I’ll keep loving you as long as there is breath in my lungs.

Maybe I’ll see you in Heaven. (I doubt it, but if I hope for it as long as I live, I’ll have a reason to stay alive.)

I’m sorry I never told you. You deserved better than that from me.

I’m sorry for all the lies.

I’m so, so sorry.

You’re my best friend.

I’ll see you on the other side.

I hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sorry. 
> 
> Well okay, maybe a little. *cries*
> 
> Love,  
-Sil


End file.
